WASHINGTON: The United States upped its threat assessment of a potentially imminent Russian attack against Ukraine on Tuesday, warning before talks between the top US and Russian diplomats that “no option” would be off the table in the subsequent Western response. “We believe we’re now at a stage where Russia could at any point launch an attack on Ukraine,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “I would say that’s more stark than we have been.” Adding to the tensions, Russia and Ukraine’s neighbour Belarus launched snap military exercises on Tuesday. The Belarusian defence ministry said it was hosting the…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
ANKARA: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday he is open to mending Turkey’s frayed ties with Israel following a reported drop in US support for a controversial Mediterranean gas pipeline. Erdogan’s comments follow a year in which Turkey — battered by an economic crisis at home — has taken steps to improve relations with a host of regional rivals. Turkey’s relations with Israel entered a deep freeze after the death of 10 civilians in an Israeli raid on a Turkish flotilla destined for the Gaza Strip in 2010. Israel and a group of countries, including Turkey’s historic rival Greece,…
ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday called for an end to Houthi drone attacks, saying they posed a threat to peace and security. Talking to his Emirati counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, FM Qureshi condemned the “heinous terrorist attack on civilian areas” of Abu Dhabi, the Foreign Office said in a statement. Al-Nahyan had called to share details of the incident and condole the death of a Pakistani citizen in the attack. Yemen’s Houthis claimed to have fired missiles and drones against targets in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, including Abu Dhabi Airport and a refinery in Musaffah. Three…
UNITED NATIONS: Taliban leaders in Afghanistan are institutionalising large scale and systematic gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls, says a UN report released this week. The report was released on Monday by the Special Procedures group, which is the largest body of human rights experts in the UN system. In a tweet posted on the group’s official site, the experts claimed that Taliban leaders were “attempting to erase women and girls from public life through systematic gender-based discrimination & violence.” The international community “must step up humanitarian assistance responsive to women’s needs,” they added. The experts reiterated the alarm —…
GENEVA: The Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, the World Health Organisation chief said on Tuesday, cautioning against a narrative that the fast-spreading Omicron variant is risk-free. “This pandemic is nowhere near over,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters from the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva. The UN health agency chief warned against dismissing as mild the coronavirus variant Omicron, which has spread like wildfire around the globe since it was first detected in southern Africa in November. The Omicron variant of Covid-19 is much more contagious than previous strains but seems to cause less serious disease. That has triggered a debate…
Three Indian naval personnel were killed in an explosion on one of the country’s oldest destroyers at a naval dockyard in Mumbai, authorities said. The blast occurred on Tuesday in an internal compartment on the Soviet-built INS Ranvir, commissioned in 1986, according to the Indian Navy. “No material damage has been reported … [A] board of inquiry has been ordered to investigate into the cause,” the navy said in a statement on Tuesday. Broadcaster NDTV quoted sources saying the explosion did not involve weapons or ammunition. Media reports said 11 people were also injured and were being treated at a navy hospital.…
Israel has offered security and intelligence support to the United Arab Emirates against further drone attacks after a deadly strike by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group, according to a letter released on Tuesday by Israel’s leader. Three people were killed and six wounded on Monday when three tanker trucks exploded in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital. A Houthi military spokesman said the group fired “a large number” of drones and five ballistic missiles in the attack. On Twitter, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett condemned what he described as a “terrorist drone attack”. His spokesman attached a copy of a condolence letter he sent…
A London-based law firm filed an application with British police on Tuesday seeking the arrest of India’s army chief and a senior Indian government official over their alleged roles in war crimes in Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK). Law firm Stoke White said it submitted extensive evidence to the Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes Unit documenting how Indian forces headed by Gen Manoj Mukund Naravane and Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah were responsible for the torture, kidnapping and killing of activists, journalists and civilians. The law firm’s report was based on over 2,000 testimonies taken between 2020 and 2021. It also accused eight unnamed…
ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday ordered the declassification of all critical documents linked to the foreign funding case against the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). The documents were part of the ECP scrutiny committee report, released a couple of weeks ago, which had been kept secret and were not released alongside the report when it was made public. The documents being made public will include all the papers sought by the ECP through the state of Pakistan, in its letter dated July 3, 2018. The ECP scrutiny committee had kept the record secret as the PTI objected to sharing…
KARACHI: A policeman, said to be involved in the last week’s killing of a newly wed young man on Kashmir Road during an armed robbery, allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the temple to ‘escape arrest’ when law enforcers traced and tried to capture him through a trap set with the help of his friend, police said on Tuesday. The fact that the suspect was himself a policeman having history of criminal activities has outraged the general public. The police said that the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) launched the probe into the newly wed Shahrukh’s killing and after collecting evidence identified…
